Preventing Power Outage by Mobile Technology and Social Media

By: Kohei Nishiyaman, Founder and Chairman of CUUSOO.com*

 Citizens Responding to Risk

Post March 11^th, after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power accident, it became clear that energy security issue looms high for future potential disaster in Tokyo Metropolitan region this summer. Due to suspension nuclear power plant, energy buffer is non existent and Tokyo is facing a risk of repeated power outages.

Unlike risks of natural disasters such as earthquake or Tsunami, societal risks such as power outage can be avoided if citizens collectively react to switch off air-conditioner. However precondition is that citizens need to be notified precisely before the energy consumption level peaks off the supply capacity limit.

Members of Design Global Agenda Council at World Economic Forum and team of entrepreneurs have been formulating potential solution to respond to societal risk by aggregating collaboration from citizen by using mobile device and social network services.

Hypothesis : Form a Risk Response Community

With the widespread of mobile devices and social media, information to invoke citizen participation could be provided. The aim is to form community with members who have agreed to take preventive action to avoid disaster. The calculation shows that if 1million household, which means one out of twenty households in Tokyo, agree to respond to switch off air-conditioners, we could avoid outages.

*Kohei Nishiyama is attending the World Economic Forum on East Asia and is a Young Global Leader and a member on the Global Agenda Council on Design. He is guest blogging for the Forum.